In-Row LOB Columns and Bulk Copy

The SAP ASE bcp utility supports tables that use in-row LOB columns, storing LOB columns in-row as long as the off-row data fits your defined in-row size, and the resulting row meets the page-size limitation.

In addition, bcp in handles character-set conversions for the text datatype when stored as in-row LOB in the same way the utility handles char and varchar datatype conversions.

This means that when server-side character-set conversion is active, SAP ASE rejects in-row LOB data if the required space after conversion differs from the original length. When this occurs, you see:

BCP insert operation is disabled when data size is 
changing between client and server character sets. 
Please use BCP's -Y option to invoke client-side 
conversion.

For this reason, SAP recommends you use the bcp -Y option to force SAP ASE to perform character-set conversions on the client instead of on the server. Ensuring that the character data for both the client and server have the same length.